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Up-till now I have tried to describe few common examples of Blocks, a part of Mental Walls, in this last part I will try to describe the Bugs, second part of Mental Walls.

Bugs, are mental walls created by learned, cultural or environment standards which do not allow people to correctly or effectively perceive the problem and its solutions. Like Blocks, Bugs also hinder us in the solution of problems that we experience.

Bugs are specifically those mental walls or obstacles which we have acquired as a direct influence from the culture/society that we live in or the environment that surrounds us. Different regions and areas that we live in have different Mental Bugs and/or sometimes Mental Blocks. Like some nations/societies have culture/traditions/rituals which are actually not correct or fruitful or healthful for humans, which actually bugs out the new thoughts and ideas.

So once we are able to recognize the cultural and environmental bugs that confront us/bugs us, we then can look past them to find the solution to our problems.

The following are some mind opening examples of Bugs that I have tried to think of:

1)Taboos:

Wiki says : “A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and forbidden based on moral judgement and sometimes even religious beliefs. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society.”

Our society has imposed or forced few set of standards and traditions which cause us to act in certain situations. These taboos play positive role in our society but sometimes they hinder us to perceive the problem and its solutions.

For example, a family is in very difficult situation, completely stranded in the desert without water. One very possible benefit of their survival might be collecting urine and sponging their bodies with it to cool themselves and conserve limited body moisture. Documented accounts exists in which families’ lives have been saved because of their willingness to consider such action although first impressions were probably negative.

What? I know what you are thinking of or how you felt while reading the solution of the above desert-problem. I wont comment anything on your thoughts or feelings, in-fact those thoughts and feelings were the effects/reflections of taboos.

2) Daydreaming:

How many times you have been scolded or disturbed by others because you were daydreaming?

Daydreaming and relaxing are regarded as signs of laziness. This is a very common socially imposed standard which is often totally wrong. There are tons of articles about TO GET RID OF DAYDREAMING, DAYDREAMING IS BAD, etc. But the truth is that daydreaming is a way of mental practice, it has been proved that mentally prepared people do best in their job/task/etc, I would like to give an example of Abraham Lincoln, he used to daydream and prepared himself mentally about his first speech at the White House, which was one of the best speech of his time.

It has been proved that daydreaming, reflection, mental playfulness and visualizing are aids to creativity, conceptualization, problem solving and accomplishment. This type of “laziness” ought to be considered a positive trait.

3)Intuition and feeling are BAD:

Society often imposes the feeling that judgments and problem solutions should be based on reason, logic, numbers and quantitive information. This information is good and often essential to effective evaluation of a problem, but intuition should not be overlooked. Emotions and feelings which are interpreted by intuition are often necessary considerations to solving problems.

Albert Einstein says “The only real valuable thing is Intuition”.

4) Tradition opposes change:

Our society, which now highly values innovation, indicates that tradition does not hold the strength it once did. Anything new and different is often met with doubt and skepticism rather than optimism. One should not be so in favor of tradition that he/she opposes all change or so in favor of change that he/she disregard all tradition.

5) Assigned cultural and social values:

An example of this might be illustrated in the problem of removing a hundred rupees bill from beneath a precariously balanced object without tipping over the object. It is easy to remove the bill by tearing it in two, but this solution is usually subconsciously ruled out because of our value of money.

Proper and effective brainstorming will be ruled out immediately because of such assigned cultural and social values.

These examples or common types of Bugs and Blocks that you read are by no means all there are. They serve only to introduce an awareness of how these mental walls or obstacles affect individual production. Look around, be conscious of the almost innumerable and subtle habits, values and environments which influence our lives.